Thread: Straightening Out a Vintage Strop

Originally Posted by Euclid440

The linen would probably benefit from soaking, scrubbing and most importantly through rinsing, and then rolling while damp. I can take several full cycles. Be careful when wet, you can literally break the strop in half. Flax will swell and get rock hard.

There are many good threads here on re-hydrating/ restoring leather and linen. If the strop has value to you, invest a little time, before you apply anything to it.

The linen piece came with a waxy coating on it. Should that still get soaked? It does seem stiff, but as if it was meant to be that stiff because of the wax.

Linen were treated with a number of things and many are stiff, but I have washed many and they come out soft and floppy, They also produce a much better finish. The down side is it may shrink a inch or so, but hanging, weighted and rolling will minimize the shrinking.

The trick is to soak in a mild soap solution overnight, scrub with a brush and soak in a water/vinegar solution and rinse in clear water. Roll the strop when damp, allowed to dry a little/. Keep repeating the process until you rinse water is clear.

Rolling will loosen the fibers, release all the dirt and dust trapped in the weave and make the strop soft.

Here is a post on cleaning and rolling a flax fire hose.

Thank you for the advice. It is appreciated, as is everyone's help and comments.

Should I be attempting to totally remove the wax treatment with the soakings or just loosen up the linen and keep the wax?

This is the first vintage strop I've owned so I am not well versed at all in restoring a strop.

Originally Posted by Matt1222

Thank you for the advice. It is appreciated, as is everyone's help and comments.

Should I be attempting to totally remove the wax treatment with the soakings or just loosen up the linen and keep the wax?

This is the first vintage strop I've owned so I am not well versed at all in restoring a strop.

Don't remove the wax. That's part of the linen treatment and was intended for the user, and wouldn't be in it if it didn't have a purpose. If you're using the linen to keep the razor in shape, it feels harsh because of the wax stiffness but will not damage an edge. If you take the treatment out of the linen, it won't work as it was intended to.

You can get another used linen (one that someone has ruined by treating it with abrasives - such a linen will be gray/black in the middle with metal swarf) to wash out if you want to try it untreated, but I would absolutely not do it to a strop of the quality of the one you have - preserve the original and use it as it was intended and you'll grow to appreciate the fact that it can stretch you out to a year between honings without any loss in edge quality.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with Euclid that you may find the linen nicer to use without any treatment, but you can do it with another linen that's not part of such a beautiful strop. I like the linen with the treatment in tact, but I suspect that I am doing something not many are doing (which is allowing the razor to stay away from stones despite having probably 75 stones at the moment).

The other benefit to leaving that treatment is that if you do accidentally get something on the surface, it will just sit on the surface of the wax and you can wipe it off. If you decide you hate the wax, you can always remove it later, but you'll never be able to put it back if you take it off.

Don't worry about softness with the linen, by the way. It won't hurt the razor. Mine is still stiff and I have a feeling that it was from the factory. Some old ones I've found are less so, but it's probably a matter of lack of treatment - the better strops always have a fairly stiff linen. This situation is entirely different than fresh flax linen made recently that needs to be soaked and treated to remove its roughness - you'll find your linen to be stiff, but not rough by any means. Your first use of it will have you convinced that it must be damaging the edge, but wipe the wax off of your razor after using it, strop it on leather, and you'll be surprised that no damage is done.

Thanks DaveW,
I was wondering about the very same thing with my Red Imp strop. I brushed it with woolite and when it dried it was still pretty stiff. Thank you very much for sharing that piece of information.

It is a matter of personal preference, I wash all my vintage linen strops and remove all or any treatment, and every strop I have washed, contained a lot of dirt and grit, taking several washings.

If it is a vintage, strop even NOS it is most probably dirty from dust. And that dust/dirt is abrasive. I am not sure that vintage strops were meant to be used stiff.

I do know that Mr. Naomi, the maker of Nanayama strops, has always advised that his Nanayama linen strops, were intended to be washed, prior to use.

Here is the link to Aframes, the admonition and an explanation on how to wash his linen strops. (Aframes, Nanayama Strops)

You might do as suggested and try the linen, then decide if you want to wash it, personally, I would wash it. I prefer the performance from a clean linen strop.

Naomi's problem is that he doesn't get linen really intended for razors. His linen is stiff and coarse, but the linen in a silk finish linen isn't. I know he's commented that he can't get good linen, and his linen bears little resemblance to what's in old strops.

Some of the vintage strops come with little in them in terms of wax, and those will be dirty. The NOS strops that have a fairly heavy treatment that is in them through and through should be left as is, though no doubt the linen underneath is likely very good quality.

I may be in the weeds a little because my silk finish linen (and its horse strop) was still in the wrapper when I got it, so it was clean. Definitely stiff, and I was sure it was hurting the razor the first time I used it only to find out it wasn't. Someone who put that mixture on those linens had a reason for it, as it would've been cheaper and easier to leave them untreated if that's what they felt was preferable. It's not a soft wax, and may be petroleum based or beeswax based.

There are a lot of dirty and less expensive linens (without the treatment on them or with minimal) that can be used, I'd just hesitate on something that was high dollar like the strop shown to remove something that in my experience improves the strop. As you say, if it's filthy, then it's contaminated and that's a different story.

The other bit of evidence that I see in the older strops is that the high quality heavily treated linens seem to reside on the expensive strops, but not so much on the inexpensive strops. The inexpensive stop linens are closer to plain linen in most cases.

Actually, the instructions for breaking in the linen on the Aframes Tokyo site is from Iwasaki's guide from 1963. It's Section 1, Part 7: "How To Soften A Hard Strop" on page 10 of the PDF (page 5 in the Index). No mention at all that these directions were written for Kanayama strops.

Here is a PDF of the guide if you want a copy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3nb7xshtnm...20New.pdf?dl=0


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by sqzbxr

Actually, the instructions for breaking in the linen on the Aframes Tokyo site is from Iwasaki's guide from 1963. It's Section 1, Part 7: "How To Soften A Hard Strop" on page 10 of the PDF (page 5 in the Index). No mention at all that these directions were written for Kanayama strops.

Here is a PDF of the guide if you want a copy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3nb7xshtnm...20New.pdf?dl=0


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure if you're implying what I'm implying, which is that the kanayama strops are untreated. They have to be broken in because they are hard linen. A different animal than the silk finish linen on a red imp strop, which very definitely has the wax on it and is to be used as it is. The OP will understand what I mean by the wax being in it through and through. It's not a quickie treatment that was just globbed on - it's very deliberately made that way.

One of the reasons we lose the subtlety of just how good those linens are is that nobody hones and shaves that way these days. We're hone happy, which is a shame, because the edge from a treated linen of this type is more elegant, smoother, etc, and more constant day to day. It makes shaving an irritation free-pleasure, but sharpness is easily fine to do the job.